


Little Box

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anakin Cries, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker Leaves the Jedi Order, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Anakin Skywalker is a Beautiful Human, Anakin misses his Mom, Angst, Anxiety, Caregiving, Coming of Age, Cuddling, Depression, Desperation, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fuck Canon, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Loneliness, Love, Mental Health Issues, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Pining, Reader-Insert, Relationship(s), Romantic Friendship, Self-Doubt, Self-Harm, Self-Worth Issues, Suicidal Ideation, Tatooine, Teen Angst, Teenagers, The Jedi Order Sucks, Trust, Untreated Mental Illness, non-sexual nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27070708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: As a Padawan growing up alongside Anakin, you've always been painfully aware of the way he struggles— with the Order, with himself, and with just about everything else, too. You've also always been there for him, and after witnessing him suffer a meltdown in your room one night at the Temple, you're more determined than ever to try and keep him safe.All you can really do for Ani, though, is love him... and you're not even supposed to be doing that.Is the strength of your attachment to one another enough to save him from both the expectations of the Jedi, and the raucous bedlam of his own heart?
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Reader, Anakin Skywalker/Reader
Comments: 109
Kudos: 154





	1. Enough

"Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I do it? And if you go and get _him_ , I promise you I'll be dead by the time he gets here. You don't get to pawn me off on somebody else, not this time— _I'm sick of being everyone's biggest problem."_

You stood, frozen, in the doorway leading to your own modest sleeping quarters. You were at the Temple right now, taking what you'd expected to be a reprieve from your too-frequent Jedi missions and training endeavours. You were tired; you'd been tired for a while, and you had thought that spending a bit of time here (and a bit of time with Anakin, too) might alleviate some of your stress. Being with him typically had that much-desired effect on you; however, right now...

"Put that down, Anakin," you said assertively, trying your best not to sound altogether too aggressive. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"

"I'm trying to make a point," he answered, both sounding and looking as though he might be on the verge of tears. 

What that point was, you couldn't have guessed. He was standing at the end of your bed presently, entirely unclothed and with the business end of his lightsaber's hilt pressed into the sinewy musculature on the left side of his chest. It was a chest over which you'd run your hands many times before; a chest you'd kissed and touched and been held tightly against, most often on days when Anakin had needed his arms to feel full— on days he'd been unable to ward off his perpetual, all-encompassing loneliness. 

Now he was threatening to lance it; stab it right through in the interest of communicating to you something for which he apparently didn't have words. 

"Whatever point you're trying to make," you told him, "you can make it without hurting yourself. Give me your lightsaber, and we can sit down and talk."

He scowled at that, and let his thumb hover over the button that would activate the device, if he were to press down on it. You were scared, but you were also frustrated, because you'd known for a long time that Anakin had been struggling. You couldn't help but wonder why it so often fell to you to help him with his thoughts when the Council would have been better-equipped to do so.

"There's nothing to talk about," he said. "What's the point of talking when talking isn't going to change anything? _Do you have any idea how often I feel like this?_ Every time it goes away and I think everything might start to feel okay, it comes back again! _Every single time!"_ He growled that last part of what he said; almost seemed to be gnashing his teeth at you. His eyes told you he was sad, but everything else about his disposition betrayed pure, unfettered rage. What could you do for him? You were only a Padawan, just like he was. There was nothing you could do to help except tell him everything was going to be alright... and things for Anakin had been the opposite of 'alright' enough times since you'd known him that those sorts of assurances were beginning to lose their effect.

"Usually I'm not with you when you feel like this," you pointed out, keeping a sharp eye trained on the hilt of his blade. You considered trying to pull the weapon toward you with the Force; if you could take him by surprise, you might be able to get it away from him safely. He was incredibly powerful, though, and you knew it; you weren't confident enough in your own abilities to want to take that chance. "I'm here right now, though— so why not tell me what's going on?" You hesitated before adding, "...I don't want to watch you die, Anakin. You know I love you, don't you?"

His lip trembled, and his eyes softened, but he didn't relax his body or take his sabre away from his chest. "You're the only one who cares," he said, and at that point you ventured to take a couple of steps in his direction. "You're the only one, and it's not enough."

"I'm not the only one, Ani— Master Obi-wan cares, too; so do the rest of the Jedi. They just don't understand." Understanding was not a tenet of the Order; by design, its solution to problems like the one Anakin had was to ignore them. External threats were one thing; Jedi were very good at eliminating those... however, attacks originating from within one's own head were far outside of their scope. 

"How is it going to get better, then?" he asked. Before you could even try to answer, he went on, "I feel like I'm rotting inside; like I'm about to crawl out of my skin— every time I do something, I get told I'm doing it wrong, and if I stop doing anything at all, they hate that, too. If I'm sad I'm wrong, if I'm mad I'm wrong, if I miss my mom I'm wrong! I'm even wrong for _being cold!"_ He finally took his blade away from his chest; however, it seemed he'd only done it so that he could wave his arms around as he started to pace about the foot of your bed. "No matter what I do, it's either too much or not enough. Do you have any idea how often I feel like I can't get anything right? Even when I do exactly what they tell me to do, they find something wrong with it!"

You couldn't exactly argue with that. Most of the time, you and Anakin weren't anywhere near each other; as a result, you couldn't presume to confirm or deny the veracity of his accounts. You did, however, know how the elder Jedi operated, and it wouldn't have surprised you for even a minute if you were to witness them treating Anakin precisely the way he'd described. Their dogma was harsh, and even to you seemed disinclined toward yielding to much of anything.

Besides that, you'd seen Anakin like this before— maybe not to quite _this_ extent, but really, his behaviour right now almost seemed reasonable when you thought about all of the times his feelings had been ignored. Anakin was smart, perceptive, and very sensitive; not just to the Force or his own emotions, but to the energy of others as well. Given the way he was, you thought, he had a rather heavy burden to carry... particularly considering the fact that his immense power made him a target of both his own Master's highest expectations, and those of the Council, too.

A Jedi's box was too small for Anakin; there was no way he could ever have fit all of himself into one of their tiny moulds. You wondered why no one but you had ever noticed it.

Since he seemed to be somewhat stuck on the nature of the Order, you tried, "Tell me what you miss about your mom. When was the last time you saw her?" which at the very least seemed to catch him off-guard. 

"...What?" he asked, and although he didn't let go of his weapon, he also didn't put it back to his chest. He stopped pacing, and he looked at you. You hated the pain you saw in his eyes.

"Your mother," you reiterated. "Tell me something about her."

Frustration overtook his features again, but only briefly. "What for?"

"I'm curious," you said, which was truthful— for all the times you'd talked Anakin through his feelings, you'd never really talked about his mom. All Jedi Padawans left their families at a very early age; you knew Anakin had come into the Order later than most. You supposed that if he could remember his mother with more clarity than any of the rest of you, then it meant he missed her more than the rest of you missed your parents, too. You'd never thought about how hard that might have been for him.

Standing stalk-still, he let his arms fall to his sides. He still didn't drop his lightsaber, but he also no longer seemed to be on the verge of using it to impale himself. He breathed deeply, and looked you up-and-down as if deciding whether or not to trust you. Finally, "...She hated it when I'd podrace."

"Why did she hate it?"

"Because she was afraid I'd get hurt." 

That made you smile; you couldn't help it. "She must have loved you a lot."

Now he looked uncomfortable, but uncomfortable was better than upset or furious. "...I guess so."

"I bet she still does, you know," you pointed out. Mothers never stopped loving their children, even children they weren't likely to see again.

His hand trembled, along with the rest of him. You still weren't quite sure why he was naked, but that had stopped mattering to you very soon after entering the room in the first place. "I still love her, too," he said. 

"That's beautiful, Anakin." It was. You loved how strongly Anakin felt things; it was part of why you loved _him._

His voice broke as he answered that with, "The Jedi don't think so."

You hesitated for a moment out of sheer habit (it was really more like obedience) before telling him, "The Jedi are wrong."

He started to breathe a bit harder at that; you could see his chest rise and fall as his respiration picked up its speed. You must have struck a chord with what you'd said, because you saw his grip on his lightsaber loosen, if only marginally. That was a good sign, you thought.

"You do understand that, don't you?" you asked, when he didn't say anything to what you'd observed. "They're here to teach us, but that doesn't mean they're infallible. Master Yoda; Master Obi-wan. Master Windu, too, and the whole rest of the Council— _they aren't always right. No one is."_

Anakin didn't look like he knew what to say to that. The tears that had been in his eyes since you'd first walked in on him finally began to spill over his bottom lids and trickle down his face; they came slowly, but they came nonetheless. His hands shook, and whether you should have or not, you used that opportunity: You lifted your arm, and willed the Force to draw his weapon to you. Part of you expected him to protest, but he didn't— all he did was look between you and his empty hand, before hurting his foot by kicking one of the legs of your bed. He didn't react to the pain except to wince, and curse under his breath.

You put the sabre down behind you, near the door. You had a feeling that he might be done with it, at least for today. Hesitantly, you took a few steps toward him. He stopped paying attention to his hand and fixed his gaze on you; as he did, he told you, "I was trying to sleep."

"What?" you asked him, as gently as you could. You didn't understand. 

After standing for a few moments seeming as though he didn't know quite what to do with himself, he sat down on the bed with a distinct air of defeat. He glanced at you, and then pulled part of your blanket over his lap as he looked down at his hands. "I couldn't sleep in my own bed, so I thought I'd try yours." You supposed that was his roundabout way of telling you why, exactly, he happened not to be wearing any clothes.

"Oh," you said. You certainly didn't mind him trying to get some rest. "I guess it didn't work, did it?"

He shook his head. "Not really."

You sat down, too— next to him, but not too close. You eyed his lightsaber on the floor by the door, but thankfully, it didn't move. "It's going to be okay," you said, maybe uselessly. You didn't actually know whether things would be 'okay' for him or not.

"I'm sick of being told to 'breathe'," he sighed. "I'm sick of being told to 'focus'." He clenched and unclenched his fist as he went on, "I hate being told not to be scared when I'm scared, or mad when I'm mad."

"Me too," you told him. The Jedi way wasn't the only way; might not even have been the right way, especially for someone like Anakin. The older you got, the more acutely you felt it, and you imagined it was even worse for him.

"I used to think they were... I don't know. _Otherworldly,"_ he lamented.

"You mean the Jedi?" you asked, moving a bit closer to him— maybe without either of you noticing.

"Yeah. I thought nothing could hurt them. That they couldn't even die."

It made you smile to think of him as a little boy— children were naive by their very nature, but it was part of what made them sweet; charming. "Everyone dies," you said. "Even Jedi."

To your immense relief, he smiled too. "I know that now," he said, peering over at you.

"They're just people," you continued. "Like everyone else— they bleed, they die, and they can get things wrong." That last point was the most important one of all.

"I feel stuck," he admitted. "Like I can't do this; like I'm not enough."

"You're enough," you assured him, venturing to place your own hand atop his on the bed. Laughing softly, "I actually think the problem might be that you're too much— too much for them; too much for _this."_ You motioned all around yourself; at the walls, at the ceiling. You made sure to catch his eye with yours before adding, "You don't have to stay here forever, you know. You'll grow up— we all will— and then we can do whatever we want." It wasn't as though you were physically chained to the Temple or to the Order, no matter how much the Council wanted you to feel that way. Anakin could do whatever he pleased with his life, and so could you.

"It doesn't feel that way," he whispered, looking back down at the blanket on his lap.

You were quiet for a few long moments after that, because he was right— it didn't; not all the time, anyway. "You still tired?" you asked, both because he looked it, and because you didn't want him to go about in a circle which might lead to him trying to retrieve his weapon before he was fit to possess it again. 

He blinked a few residual tears out of his eyes, swallowed hard at an apparent lump in his throat, and nodded. "I am," he answered. "I've been tired for days."

"So have I," you told him. Then, after another extended pause, "...Do you want to try again?" 

"Huh?"

"Sleeping," you clarified. "Do you want to try to sleep?"

He looked like he wasn't sure. "...Will you stay?" he asked, glancing at you again.

"Of course I will," you promised... and not just because it was your room. After that you laid back on the bed yourself; extended one of your arms, as if to invite him to join you.

He did, and as soon as he did, you embraced him; held him tightly to your chest, just as he'd held you so many times before. "I love you, Anakin," you reminded him, kissing the top of his head and giving him a squeeze.

"I love you, too," he murmured, eyes already starting to close. He didn't sound happy; didn't sound relaxed, exactly... but he did sound exhausted. Maybe a bit relieved, too, although you might have been imagining that. 

At the end of the day, it didn't matter, as long as he got some rest. You knew he'd feel better (if only for a little while) after he slept, and you were determined to help him do just that... even if all you could do was hold him, and stroke his hair. You loved to hold Anakin, and you knew that whether he said so or not, he loved to be held.

Anakin and everything that made him who he was might have been too much for the Jedi Order to contain, but despite that fact, he fit perfectly in your arms. 

You could only hope that he always would.


	2. Parting Gift

"...Are you mad at me?" asked Anakin tentatively. You were in your room packing an extra tunic into a small bag, because you had to leave Coruscant. You and your Master had been assigned a mission on a planet which just so happened to have been invaded by a mid-sized band of criminals; those criminals wanted to appropriate its apparently abundant natural resources. You weren't looking forward to it, exactly, but at least it was bound to be a decent learning opportunity.

"Of course I'm not mad at you," you said, shooting him a smile over your shoulder. "Why would I be mad?"

He shifted uncomfortably on the bed where he was sitting, looked down at the floor, and muttered something about his having been an idiot. He was fully-dressed this time; it had been a little less than a week since he'd unexpectedly confronted you with his lightsaber pressed to his own chest.

"I didn't quite catch that," you told him in reference to his mumbling, "but whatever you just said, I imagine it's probably not all that accurate." Anakin wasn't an idiot. He was the exact opposite of an idiot, really.

He sighed, drew his mouth into an expressionless line, and stared up at you with those big, blue eyes of his. The way the fabric of his robes gathered around him as he sat and the thin braid resting serenely on his shoulder leant him an air of calm; however, you could tell that he wasn't really feeling very peaceful. Conversely, he seemed anxious, and you'd already known that he was embarrassed by his actions the other day. He shouldn't have been, you thought; no one should be ashamed to be in pain.

You fastened the bag you planned to take with you on your mission, set it down, and went over to the bed to sit next to him. "Anakin," you prompted him, because although he hadn't taken his eyes off of you since looking up, he also hadn't said anything.

He clenched his jaw, and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said, followed by nothing.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," you answered, and reached up with a single hand to finger the jet-black leather tabard he wore over his tunic. Anakin, you couldn't help but note, didn't even dress quite the same way as the other Padawans. "Do you remember what I told you?"

"You told me a lot of things," he said, watching your hand curiously as it ventured to touch his clothes.

"I mean the most important thing," you clarified. You thought he'd do well to remember that the Jedi weren't all there was to the galaxy— you'd more than meant what you had said: They could most certainly be wrong, and their perspective wasn't the only one there was.

He smiled, and that encouraged you. "You mean that you love me, right?" he asked, without quite looking you in the eye. He sounded distinctly hopeful.

You felt your own face start to grow warm, because while that wasn't quite what you were talking about, it must have been the thing from your other conversation that he recalled with the most clarity. If that was what he wanted to take from it, though, then that was fine with you; if anything, it made you feel special. Anakin had a habit of making you feel that way.

"Well, yes," you said. "That _is_ important. But I also meant what I told you about the Jedi— that they're not always right about everything all the time."

"Oh!" He turned a bit pink himself. "Yeah, that too— I knew what you meant, I just—"

"I know you did," you interrupted gently, sparing him his embarrassment. He didn't say anything else after that, so you took your hand away from his tabard and touched his arm through his tunic instead. That did make him look at you a bit more directly, and so you sat and stared at each other for a few very long moments. Anakin was a wonderful person; you wished he could see himself the way you saw him, and that the elder Jedi could see him for who he was, too.

You'd also always known what you had informed him of the other day: That he was too big for this place; that his heart alone took up more space than a Jedi was allowed to occupy. It made you love him, but it made you worry for him, too... and it also made you reluctant to leave him, particularly this time.

"I'll be okay," he said, as if he knew just what you'd been thinking. He may very well have known, such was the strength of his connection to the Force.

"You promise?" you asked, giving his arm a squeeze. "If I come back and hear that something's happened to you..."

"You won't," he assured you. _"I promise."_

Because you couldn't help yourself, you used your free hand to reach up and touch his face. You expected him to wince, but he didn't. He stayed almost perfectly still, in fact, as you ran your fingertips across the skin on his cheek, right down to his chin. He was pretty, you thought— pretty in a way most boys didn't tend to be. Like all of the other things that made him different, it entranced you; you had been entranced by Anakin almost since having met him in the first place. It was more than just the way he looked, of course, but the way he looked just so happened to mirror the way he was inside. 

"I miss you when one of us has to go away, you know," you told him, just in case there'd been any doubt in his mind.

"I miss you, too," he said, reaching up to grasp your hand as it came away from his face. He held it tightly for a moment, and then released it before looking away from you again. It looked like he had more to say, but that he didn't quite know how to say it; that, or he just didn't want to. Either way, it made you curious.

"What are you thinking, Ani?" you asked. You liked to use his nickname. You knew he'd gotten it from his mother, and you also knew that few others tended to call him by it. Even Master Obi-wan, to whom you knew he was very close in spite of their differences, always addressed him with 'Anakin'. Hearing 'Ani', though, usually seemed to make him happy, and you certainly loved to see him smile. 

Right now, he wasn't smiling anymore. In fact, something appeared to have made him uncomfortable. You hoped it hadn't been you. 

Just as you were about to start to apologize, he began nervously, "I think I'd like to... well... I think I'd like to give you something. ...Would that be okay?"

Now you were even more curious. With a tilt of your head you asked him, "What is it?" before adding hastily, "Of course it would be okay." You realized that you didn't have anything for him, however, which made you feel a bit guilty. Jedi— Padawans included— didn't put much emphasis on material possessions. What could Anakin possibly have had to give you?

He still looked unsure, but soon he was reaching beneath his tunic and into a pocket concealed by the outermost layers of his robes. He took something out; however, whatever it was, it was small— small enough to remain completely concealed by his hand as he mulled over whether to actually reveal it to you.

"Come on," you cajoled kindly. "Show me." Not only were you very interested; you also wanted to be encouraging. You smiled at him, but he didn't smile back— not yet, anyway.

"It's okay if you don't want it," he qualified. "It's kind of stupid that I've kept it for this long, but..." He trailed off, staring down at his clenched fist. 

"I can't tell you whether I think it's stupid or not unless you show it to me, can I?" you chuckled.

You expected him to laugh back, but he didn't. Instead, he slowly pulled his fingers away from his palm to reveal to you the contents of his hand. "It's this," he said, without offering any sort of explanation. 

"It's beautiful," you marvelled quietly, and you meant it— whatever he was holding, it was exceedingly lovely. 

"It's a flame-gem," he told you, still sounding uneasy. "They come from Tatooine— from where I grew up." 

Its name definitely suited it. It was a rich shade of orangey copper; almost red, but not quite. It clearly hadn't been carved, but for its rough jaggedness, its shape was still incredibly alluring. It almost seemed to glow in the soft light of your room, and although it took up less than half his palm, it didn't fail to impress you. Of all the things you thought he might have had for you, a precious stone certainly wouldn't have been among your guesses. You had a strong feeling that the elder Jedi would have discouraged him from retaining ownership of it, had they known it existed.

The fact that you hadn't taken it from his hand yet appeared to be encouraging his disquiet to grow, and so you grasped it gingerly between your thumb and forefinger; held it up to your own face to get a better look. It was clear enough that you could see right through it, in spite of the richness of its colour.

"Where did you get this, Anakin?" you asked, admiring the way it refracted the light passing through it. 

"From my mother," he answered, which surprised you immensely. Firstly, you were a bit incredulous that he would give you something that had come from her; secondly, he'd already told you that his mother was a slave. What would a slave woman be doing with something like this; how would it have come into her possession to begin with? 

"Ani, I—"

"She must have put it in the bag I took with me when I left," he interrupted, as though he might have been afraid of what you were going to say about it. "I don't know where she got it, and I didn't know she had it until I found it with my things."

"Selling it might have made her life a lot easier," you observed, wondering why she'd never done just that.

"I know," he said. "I wish I could take it back to her, but I can't— so, I thought the next best thing would be to give it to you. Like I said, you don't have to take it; if you don't want it, I can just—"

"It's not that I don't want it, Ani." It wasn't that at all; truth be told, you loved it. You'd never seen anything like it. "It's just... well, don't you think you should keep it? I don't think I'd feel right taking something you got from your mother." You knew how much he missed her, perhaps now more than ever before. If he had something like this to remember her by, you thought he should be the one to keep it.

He clearly didn't feel the same way, because he shook his head and said decidedly, "You should have it."

You looked into his eyes, trying to pick up on what he might have been feeling, but couldn't. Even with the Force, Anakin was often unreadable. "How come?" you asked, unable to even begin to discern why he thought you deserved to be in possession of something you knew meant so much to him. 

"You love me," he said matter-of-factly. The expression on your face must have indicated that you didn't understand, so (not without some obvious effort) he went on, "You were right when you said that she loved me, too. It must have been why she gave it to me." He looked back down at his own lap and began to fiddle with the hem of his tunic, now that his hand was empty. "Since I left her, I can't think of anyone else who's been there for me the way you have. It just... makes sense to me that you should have it."

You weren't sure what to say to that. You and Anakin had bonded when you'd barely been more than children; it had been years since then, and you'd always remained close. Even when you started to get older and your friendship began to transform into something it probably shouldn't have, the intimacy you shared was always based primarily on your mutual understanding of one another. That was how you knew you loved him— it had never, ever just been about touching him, or having him touch you. The closeness you shared meant a lot more than that; it always had.

"Thank you, Ani," you said, clasping the gem in one hand and reaching out to touch his shoulder with the other. "I wish I could tell you how much this means to me." You also wished more than ever that you had something to give him in return.

He looked up at you again. "You already are telling me," he whispered, the ghost of a new smile tugging at the side of his mouth. He must have been able to pick up on your feelings better than you could pick up on his; you were grateful for that, because you truly didn't have words that were adequate as far as thanking him was concerned. To have been given something that the person he loved most in the world had given him was an unrivalled distinction, at least from your perspective.

It was only then that you noticed your eyes had started to fill with tears. Why were you crying? You tried to blink them away, but that only made them start to trickle down your face. 

"I'm sorry!" he said, as though he'd done something wrong. "I didn't mean to—"

"No," you corrected him. "No— no, don't apologize." You took the hand you weren't using to hold the gem from his shoulder, and used it to squeeze his fingers. "It's just... I've never— I mean, I wouldn't have thought—"

"I love you," he said, leaning in closely for the first time since you'd sat down beside him. He was finally smiling again; to see him smile was always a relief to you.

"I love you too, Ani. I've always loved you; it's why I worry about you, and why I—"

"I understand," he interrupted, sparing you as you'd spared him earlier. "I guess part of why I want you to have it is because it's sort of.... I don't know. A promise."

"A promise?"

"A promise that I won't do anything stupid while we're apart, no matter how I feel."

Your tears didn't stop coming (it seemed that nothing could have made them stop just then), but you returned his smile once more anyway. Nothing was ever going to erase from your mind the image of him pushing the hilt of his lightsaber into his chest; maybe he knew that. Actually, he must have known that.

There wasn't anything else for you to say, and suddenly you felt acutely aware of the fact that you had to leave very, very soon— too soon, all things considered. As a Padawan, though, there was nothing you could do about that; nothing you could do about anything. 

One thing you could do, though, was pull Anakin close to you before you had to go, and so that was what you did: Gemstone still in hand, you wrapped your arms around him and hugged him as tightly as you could ever remember hugging anybody. He was warm, and you could smell the wool of his tunic and the leather of his tabard as you pressed your face into his shoulder, and let his clothes soak up your tears. He seemed taken aback, but only briefly; before long, he had placed his own arms around you in return.

You would stay that way until a sharp knock at the door forced you apart, altogether too quickly. You knew it was your Master; knew his presence meant it was time for you to go. It also meant that you and Anakin had to pretend not to have been holding each other, and that you had to tuck what he'd given you away and out of sight. 

You did, but not before glancing between it and his face one more time, reflecting upon the promise to you that it represented. 

It hurt you to have to leave, but you also knew that leaving was okay, because you trusted Anakin to be alright— trusted him to take good enough care of himself that the two of you would have the opportunity to embrace one another again.

Whether it was right or wrong for you to feel the way you did, there was nothing in the entire galaxy that mattered more.


	3. Dirty Laundry

"You performed well, young one."

"Thank you, Master." 

You were sitting beside your instructor, on a small shuttle bound for Coruscant. Your mission having been accomplished over the course of a few turbulent weeks, it was now time to go 'home'. He was piloting the ship, and while you ought to have been helping him navigate, you weren't really offering much in the way of assistance. Instead, you were staring out the window at the stars, barely paying attention. You were so mired in your own thoughts, in fact, that you were fortunate to have heard what he'd said to you in the first place.

"Your reluctance to draw your weapon was to everyone's benefit— I can see that you understand the importance of exhausting peaceful avenues before resorting to violence."

"Thank you, Master."

He seemed to have begun to pick up on your lack of attentiveness; however, he went on anyway, "Even when we _did_ have to apply a more aggressive method, you were selective and cautious— although not to a fault." He looked over at you and added encouragingly, "You should be proud of yourself."

"Thank you, Master." Your intonation was flat, and your eyes were still fixed upon the vast darkness outside the window.

The elder Jedi was quiet for a few minutes after that. At first, you were relieved by the silence, however...

"Upon our return to Coruscant, you will refrain from mingling with young Skywalker any more than is necessary."

That, at least, made you quit staring outside. "I don't understand," you said as you looked over at your Master, even though you were fairly sure you actually did.

"He distracts you, and Master Obi-wan says that you distract him."

"I don't really think—"

"The two of you are close, aren't you?" He looked at you knowingly, and you tried to stop your face from flushing.

"I guess you might say—"

"Inessential bonding between Padawans is harmful," he went on, disregarding what you were going to say before you even had a chance to say it. "Besides, the Council believes that the breadth of Skywalker's power puts him in a uniquely challenging position— nothing can interfere with his training, juvenile attachments in particular." He almost seemed to spew the word 'attachments', as though it were a curse.

"We're friends, Master," you said simply, knowing that to protest too much would betray you even more than your actions apparently already had.

"'Friends' or not, you are to keep your distance from him. Speaking personally, I don't believe him to be an especially good influence on you anyhow." He paused, perhaps to let what he'd said sink in. "Have I spoken with adequate clarity?"

"...Yes, Master."

You resumed staring out the window at that point, and did your best not to think too loudly about just how you were going to circumvent the Council's new directive... because if you weren't allowed to be there for Anakin, you had a very strong feeling that no one else would be, either.

...

"What could you possibly have done to deserve _this?_ Master Obi-wan knows they have droids for that, doesn't he?"

Anakin looked up at you, and then back down at the vast swath of woven oak-coloured wool he happened to be scrubbing clean of dirt and sweat and blood. He was crouched over a basin with his sleeves pushed up, next to a pile of dirty laundry somewhere in the depths of the Temple. Thankfully, he was far away from the elders' quarters and common areas. It hadn't been difficult to find him: This time, his energy had given him away almost immediately. Frustration radiated from him like heat from a bonfire, and even if it hadn't, the look on his face would have been enough to tell you just what he was feeling, with or without the Force.

"I messed up during training," was all he said, scowling at a particularly stubborn dark spot on the robe he'd apparently been ordered to clean.

"Oh. I missed you," you told him, knowing better than to ask him precisely what had happened quite yet. You presumed that he must have gotten angry; when Anakin got angry, he tended to lose his grip on his own power. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd been chastised for it. 

"I know. I missed you too." His expression softened, but he didn't peer back up at you, and he didn't stop scrubbing. 

"I brought you something," you said next, smiling even though he wasn't looking at your face. "I figured we could share it. I've never tried it before, so—"

"What is it?" 

"It's this," you grinned, and knelt down on the floor. You took off the small bag you'd had slung over your shoulder since sneaking off to find him, and opened it so that he could see inside. 

He looked skeptical until he got a good look at what you'd been toting around with you; when he did, his face finally lit up. "Haroun bread!" he exclaimed a bit too loudly, which he seemed to realize right away. More quietly, he asked incredulously, "Where did you get that?"

"A vendor was selling it on the planet my Master and I just got back from. He _insisted_ that we take something from his shop for our trip back to Coruscant; as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it."

He dropped the dirty tunic back into the washbasin he'd been using, dried his hands off on his own clothes, and took a piece out of your bag. There were two dark-brown, globe-shaped portions of it. The bread's outer crust was hard enough that it didn't have to be wrapped; you'd been letting it sit loose atop a piece of waxy paper that the vendor had given you along with it. After turning it over in his hand, Anakin looked up at you wide-eyed. "You didn't go to...?"

"No," you said, not without a hint of regret. "We weren't on Tatooine. But the man who made these said that he spent time there when he was younger, working for the Hutts." If you'd been on Tatooine, you thought, you would almost certainly have tried to get away from your Master long enough to go and find Anakin's mother— perhaps to give her flame-gem back to her, as he had told you he wished he could.

"Lucky for him he doesn't work for them anymore," Anakin laughed, still staring at the bread. "My mother _always_ had some of this in the house."

"I remember you telling me," you said, and you sat down on the floor beside him as you took the other piece out of your bag. You couldn't help but laugh, because he'd already broken his portion open, and was holding one of the halves up to his nose. You followed his lead and did the same; to you it smelled like ground wheat and oat flour... but to him it must have smelled like home. You hoped it did, anyway.

"Thank you," he said, with just the type of earnestness that had always endeared him to you.

You only nodded, because he'd already started to eat what you'd brought him. The taste of it seemed to take him somewhere else; somewhere far away from the cold, stone floor of the Temple— and the washbasin, and the dirty tunics piled up beside it, too. You were quiet for a little while as you let him go back in time a bit; while you did, you tried the Haroun bread for yourself. It was soft on the inside, albeit a bit gritty; whatever type of flour had been used, it hadn't been milled too finely. There was a hint of some kind of spice, and a somewhat lesser note of saltiness, but not much else. All things considered, it was nice; you liked it. You imagined eating it under the heat of those two blazing suns Anakin had described to you more than once.

"Would you mind if I took the rest of this back up to my quarters?" he asked, after finishing about half of what you'd given him.

"Of course not," you said, and you retrieved the paper out of your bag so he could wrap it up. You gave him what remained of yours, too; if it made him happy, then he should be the one to take the leftovers.

"Master Obi-wan will laugh when I tell him you—"

"Don't tell Master Obi-wan," you said, a twinge of fear or something like it running through you. 

"Huh? Why? It's just bread; I don't think he—"

"Didn't he tell you what my Master told me?" you asked, lowering your voice to a near-whisper.

"Nobody told me anything," he said as he wrapped up the rest of the bread and set it far away from the soapy water in the basin, "except that I can't go to sleep until all of these clothes are clean. What are you talking about?"

You sighed. "I wasn't supposed to come and find you at all," you admitted, looking down at the floor. "My Master told me on the way back to Coruscant that he thinks I'm too close with you; that we're supposed to stay apart."

He tilted his head and furrowed his brow. "...No one told me that," he said. "Did your Master say anything else?"

"He told me that we 'distract' one another, and that if we're too attached, your training will suffer. He told me that the Council thinks your power means you have to focus more on doing what you're _meant_ to do than on what you _want_ to do." You were paraphrasing, but that's what you had taken from the conversation, anyway. You left out the bit about Anakin being a bad influence on you; he didn't need to hear it, and you didn't especially want to say it out loud.

His face twisted up into a scowl again. He raised a hand, only to find that he had nothing to hit, with the exception of his own leg. After driving his fist sharply into his thigh just above the knee, he took a deep breath and looked at you as though he was afraid you might obey your Master's instruction. You almost understood why nobody had said anything to him about you. Next, though, it occurred to you that if you _had_ decided to do as your Master had ordered, Anakin would have perceived it as a rejection— which made you feel angry, too.

"I wouldn't have come to find you tonight if I was going to listen to what he said," you assured him.

"You're the only real friend I have," he pointed out.

"We can still be friends— we just have to be a bit more careful about it." 

"'Careful'," he sneered. "Do you know how sick and tired I am of—"

"I know, Ani," you interrupted. You thought his nickname went nicely with the bread. "I don't like it either, but I also don't want to make your life any harder than it already is."

"It's not you. It's _them,_ " he told you disdainfully. "What did I tell you? I can't do _anything_ right— I can't even have a friend properly." 

You felt a little guilty just then. If you hadn't grown close to Anakin in the first place, then he wouldn't have a reason to feel the way he did right now. He needed a friend, though, you reasoned; you needed one, too— and you couldn't think of anyone you wanted to be close to more than Ani. It was why you'd risked punishment by coming to find him almost immediately upon your return to the Temple. You recalled how happy you'd been to feel his energy emanating from where you were sitting with him now, and that made you smile. 

Since there was still nothing you could do about the Council or your Masters, you said to him, "I don't really care about what they think any more than I did before," and again that image of him with his lightsaber pressed into his chest passed through your mind. That night had proven difficult to forget. "I don't feel like being 'careful' either, but it's better than being taken away from each other altogether, isn't it?" You knew it was well within your respective instructors' ability to keep you from seeing one another at all, for months or even years if they decided it was for the best. You hated that thought a lot more than the thought of taking a little extra caution.

This time, it was him who sighed. "I guess," he admitted. He finally smiled again, for the first time since he'd seen the bread. As he sat up taller and reached back into the washbasin to handle the tunic he'd dropped back into it a few minutes ago, he told you dryly, "Anyway, I wouldn't want you to end up having to do _this_ job. I don't know what the guy who wore this thing was doing before he dumped it on me, but whatever it was, it's impossible to wash off."

You were proud of him for resisting the urge to ruminate. You laughed, and confirmed for him, "It doesn't exactly look like fun." You paused to watch him resume scrubbing; after a moment you offered, "I wouldn't mind helping you out, you know."

He looked back up at you with an expression that told you he thought you were nuts. _"You_ weren't the one who used the Force to rip a sconce off the wall and throw it at your opponent's head during lightsaber training."

It was all you could do to stop yourself from gaping. "You did _what?"_

"He deserved it," Anakin scoffed dismissively. 

You'd rolled up your own sleeves by then and crouched down next to him at the basin, so you jabbed him in the side with your elbow before scolding him, _"No one_ deserves that! Where'd you learn to fight so dirty?"

"Mos Espa," he retorted, jabbing you back. 

You laughed, because he'd told you all about the town he'd grown up in, and his answer made perfect sense. Pulling your shoulders back, you gesticulated with your soapy hands and did your very best impression of Master Obi-wan: _"Anakin! You're on Coruscant now! That is **not** the Jedi way!"_

He wiped away a bit of soap you'd inadvertently flung onto his face, and chuckled before demanding of you, "Stop it," although he was still grinning. "You're too good— that's _exactly_ what he said, and exactly how he said it, too."

"Sorry," you smiled back. "I'm supposed to be helping you forget about that stuff, aren't I?"

He shrugged, and then he leaned in closely. "How about I get you back for it later?" he suggested wryly.

That shocked you a bit, because you understood precisely what he meant— and while having him 'get you back' was nothing you hadn't experienced before, it was something that usually just seemed to happen. You never, ever actually _talked_ about it.

"I— well, I kind of figured you'd want to put a hold on that kind of—"

"It's like you said: We can do whatever we want, as long as we're careful... right?"

You balked. "That's not _quite_ what I meant."

He shrugged again, laughed at you, and went back to trying to get the stain out of the wet tunic you were now both holding. You shook your head, and got to work on it, too. He had a fairly large pile of laundry to go through, and the more of it you helped him with, the sooner he'd get to leave. 

You made sure to keep your senses sharply tuned on the door through which you'd entered the room, just in case one of the Jedi whose robes Anakin was supposed to wash decided that they should check on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluffier than I intended. Oh well, I like it. Poor kids.


	4. Someday

_"What do you mean he 'got sick'?"_

_"I mean he got sick— he fell down on his way out of his room this morning, and he's been in the infirmary ever since."_

...

You'd been awake in your own quarters for hours now. It was very late at night, and you couldn't sleep; couldn't even bring yourself to lie down. Your mind was completely overtaken by the news that had been shared with you— by Anakin, his condition, and what might have happened to him.

It had been a few weeks since you had last spoken to him at all; you'd been one of a very small number of Padawans selected to undergo a series of special training sessions on another part of Coruscant, far away from the Temple. Your Master had told you that it was because you showed a particular aptitude for psychometry; however, you highly suspected that your presence there had more to do with keeping you away from Ani than anything else. (Anakin, anyhow, was far better than you at psychometry, and you knew it.) Whether you should have or not, you felt extraordinarily guilty that he had apparently fallen ill in your absence; hated not knowing what had made him sick, or if he was recovering. 

You sat down on your bed with your legs crossed and Anakin's flame-gem clasped tightly in your hand. You closed your eyes, concentrated, and attempted to clear your mind. If you tried very hard, you thought, then maybe you could get a read on him. It had worked when you'd come back from your last mission... but part of the reason it had been so effective was almost certainly because Anakin had been frustrated that night— frustrated, and healthy. If he was sick enough to be laying in bed in a medical facility, then you supposed there was a chance his energy might be too weak for you to detect.

 _Anakin!_ you called out with your mind, perhaps into a void. _Anakin, what happened?_

You waited— and waited, and then waited some more, but there was still no answer, not even an abstract one. As far as you were concerned, he may as well not have been inside the Temple at all. Part of you presumed it was only because your senses weren't sharp enough; however, another part of you feared that it was because he was so unwell as to not be giving off anything for you to pick up on. No one had told you anything except for the person who'd informed you that he was sick in the first place, and they— another Padawan— hadn't known any more than what they'd already revealed. You definitely weren't foolish enough to go around asking after him; to do that would likely have ensured that you'd _never_ find out.

Once you had exhausted your focus trying and failing to detect his energy or contact him through the Force, you resorted to more waiting— you realized, now, that you would have to go off and assess his condition for yourself. It would mean moving both stealthily and very late at night, and you knew you'd be risking a punishment far worse than laundry if you happened to get caught. After all, you had been specifically instructed not to mingle with Anakin for more than one reason; in addition to that, you had a distinct feeling that your own Master was well aware of what Ani meant to you, no matter what he did or didn't say about it out loud.

Frankly, though, the worst consequence you could think of would be for the elder Jedi to deliberately keep the two of you apart... and it seemed that they were already doing a fairly effective job of that.

They must not have realized all that meant was that you had nothing to lose by trying to go and see him.

...

The corridors in the Temple were never shrouded in darkness— not entirely, anyway. Even in the dead of night, dim light emanated from the sconces lining the walls. As you crept along carefully in the direction of the infirmary, you found that even the light fixtures themselves made you think of Anakin: You hadn't forgotten that he'd been made to wash all of those filthy tunics as punishment for having used the Force to turn one of them into a weapon. Although obviously inadvisable, you'd thought that was rather resourceful of him, really. Anakin was nothing if not resourceful; growing up in slavery had almost certainly given him cause to foster his own inventiveness, regardless of what the other Padawans (and Jedi, too) sometimes said about his origins behind his back.

You, of course, had never judged Anakin for the way he'd been forced to live before being taken into the Order; anyone who did, you thought, was either woefully ignorant, or dishearteningly cruel. Cruelty had no place in the Jedi Order as far as you were concerned, although no one ever asked you what you thought about things like that.

After walking for a time, you came upon a door; it was a door that looked like nearly every other door in the Temple, but behind this one, you knew you would find what you were looking for: It was specifically marked by a symbol indicating that it was a medical facility; aside from storing droids and monitors and dressings for wounds, it was a place where members of the Order could rest and recover from injury and illness. That meant Anakin would be here, although you were still unable to detect his essence from where you were standing.

Glancing behind yourself to ensure that you weren't being followed, you raised a hand to the console on the wall next to the entrance, only to find that— to your great surprise— the infirmary had been left unsecured. Certain that indicated the presence of one of the elder Jedi inside, you entered the room very slowly; prepared yourself to be cast off. 

"Hello?" you said, quietly and tentatively... and to no response at all.

Emboldened, you stepped the rest of the way into the room and looked around. There were droids, but none of them seemed to be active; there was medical equipment, but none of it was currently in use. There was also a desk, behind which you'd have expected somebody to be sitting guard, but the chair pulled up to it was empty. The place, in fact, was so quiet as to make you doubt whether anyone was being kept here at all. Would they really have left Anakin here by himself, without so much as a guard or even a droid to keep him company in his illness?

You were about to exit the room altogether in favour of trying his quarters (perhaps he'd been moved), until you heard a noise— it came from behind a curtain in the far corner of the room, and to you it sounded like it denoted movement. Without so much as a thought, you headed toward that curtain, pulled it back, and smiled broadly.

"Anakin!" you exclaimed happily, even though it was obvious that he wasn't awake. Pulling the curtain closed behind you, you entered his little alcove and approached the side of the bed in which he'd been placed. _"Anakin,"_ you repeated, this time a bit more quietly, only to realize that the sleep in which your friend was mired was not a peaceful one: The sound you'd heard had been that of his writhing; he was moving in a way which told you he was more likely than not having a nightmare. Anakin had always been prone to nightmares.

With utmost care (you had no desire to frighten or shock him), you placed a hand on his bare shoulder, and gave him a gentle jostle. That was enough to wake him; however, when he regained consciousness, he also sat bolt upright in the bed. His reaction to your touch was as sudden as anything, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand. After looking around himself desperately for a moment, he finally seemed to notice you; stopped panicking, and just stared. Wide-eyed, pale, and sweaty, he certainly _looked_ as though he might be ill, although you still weren't sure what could have happened to make him that way.

"Ani," you said, this time invoking his nickname. "What's going on? Someone told me you were sick, so I came here to find you, and—"

"I'm fine," he interrupted, raising a hand to touch the spot on his shoulder from which you'd withdrawn your own fingers seconds ago. "I was having a bad dream; I—"

"It's okay," you assured him. "You're awake now. I'm just glad I found you." You put your hand out to him then; he grabbed onto it seemingly without a second thought, and held it tightly. You sat down on the bed, both because there wasn't a chair, and because you wanted to be close to him right now.

"I don't think you were _supposed_ to find me," he said. "I heard them talking while they thought I was asleep— you were right; our Masters really don't want us spending time together." He made a face as he finished; looked down at the sheets disdainfully.

"I don't really care what they want, in case you hadn't noticed." You paused just for the sake of looking at him, because you'd missed him while you were away. "Tell me what happened," you said next. "You almost never get sick; when I heard you were being kept here, I freaked out."

He smiled at that. "You didn't need to freak out," he said. "I'm okay— something I ate didn't agree with me, I guess."

"Something you ate?" you asked, tilting your head. That didn't sound right; a sour stomach wasn't cause for a stay in the infirmary, as far as you knew. 

"Yeah," he nodded. "Bad meat, I think— that, or mouldy bread."

You were quiet for a minute; studied him. He wasn't looking at you or anything else; in fact, his gaze was still fixed on the mattress beneath him. He didn't let go of your hand, though— if anything, he squeezed it even more tightly than before, as if he were afraid you might be about to leave.

"I'm not going anywhere," you assured him. "Not until someone comes in and drags me out, anyway."

"Thanks," he said, although to you he sounded a bit far away. Still without looking in your direction, he added to that, "You know I missed you, right?"

"I know— and I missed you too."

He sighed, and let go of your hand. The initial joy he'd taken in seeing you seemed to have already dissolved, but before you could ask him what he was thinking, "...You realize they're just going to keep doing this, don't you?"

You weren't sure what he meant. "I don't understand," you told him.

"Now that they know how much you mean to me, they're going to keep taking you away. The missions are going to get longer; you'll be gone more often— or I will." He scowled bitterly. "They want us to forget about each other."

"I already told you, Ani— I don't care what they want. No matter how much time we have to spend apart, I'll always come looking for you. Do you really think it's going to work; that I could forget about you?" You didn't give him a chance to verbalize his doubt before reminding him, "I couldn't ever forget... even if I tried."

"You say that now," he started, "but just wait until—"

"Stop," you told him, and now you wished you were still holding his hand. You could sense his mood; even without the Force you could have sensed it, and right now his state of mind was such that you knew he was dangerously close to taking himself in a sad, angry circle. It was what he'd been in the midst of when he'd threatened to lance himself with his lightsaber (it was only now that you noticed he didn't have it with him), and even prior to then, you'd seen him that way enough times to know to steer him away from that type of thinking. "Don't you remember what I said before? This isn't forever— nothing is forever. Someday we'll grow up, and—"

"'Someday'," he echoed scornfully, without letting you finish your thought. He finally looked back in your direction then; went on, "You've been talking about 'someday' for years, but it hasn't come yet, has it? Do you really think it's going to? By the time we're old enough to leave, we'll be as brainwashed as the rest of them; if we aren't, we'll be too scared to go. We have nothing and no one except for these people and this damn place— and we both know that's on purpose." He'd started to sound distinctly angry; you could feel his rage building, and it made you nervous. You were glad, now, that you couldn't see a trace of his lightsaber. It occurred to you that, perhaps, the Jedi had kept it from him deliberately... and that realization gave you a sinking feeling. 

"They can try," you started carefully, "but—"

"But nothing!" he shouted, loudly enough that you glanced in the direction of the door, even though the entrance to the room itself was concealed by the curtain around Anakin's bed. "You think the people on the Council _always_ wanted to be Jedi? Every single one of them? I don't— I think they all used to feel like we do, until they decided it was too hard to fight the Order. What happens when we give up, too? Forget about feeling trapped, because it's easier to pretend we're not? I saw it when I was little; the slaves on Tatooine gave up left and right, just so they wouldn't go crazy. Do you think that won't happen to us? What makes us so special? I'll tell you what— _nothing!"_

His hands were balled up into fists, and every muscle in his body seemed tense; if you didn't know better, you'd have thought he might be about to explode. You placed a hand on his leg through the sheet; tried to start again, "Ani—"

"Don't! Stop it!" You looked into his eyes, and couldn't help but notice that they'd begun to fill with tears. "You know how much I miss my mom; you know better than anybody. Yesterday, I tried to picture her in my mind, and you know what happened? _I couldn't do it!_ She raised me for nine years, and I could hardly imagine her face!" He seemed to choke on his words then, and you realized that he was on the verge of sobbing. You pressed your fingers into his leg; as you did, he finished much more quietly, "It's not just her face, either; it's her voice, too— she talked to me all the time, and I can barely remember the way she used to sound." He fell silent after that; when he did, he finally started to cry. Those tears you'd noticed started to slide down his face and fall into his lap; he squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn't stop them from coming.

You couldn't help but feel like you wanted to start crying, too. You'd known Anakin was in pain; you always had, but he'd never put it into words quite like this. What were you supposed to say? He wasn't wrong— how could feelings be wrong? Even if he wasn't technically incorrect, though, you hated that he had to feel this way. Anakin had always felt things strongly; it was part of why you'd grown to love him, but the strength of his emotions wasn't doing him any favours, least of all right now.

Since he'd been quiet for a little while, you dared to slide yourself a bit closer to him on the bed; took your arm from off his leg, and placed it around his shoulders instead. Holding him now, you asked him as gently as you possibly could, "You're not here because of rotten meat or mouldy bread, are you Ani?" That sinking feeling hadn't left you; you were quite sure, now, that you knew what was really going on.

"Shut up," he whispered through his tears.

"Tell me what happened," you said; then, more specifically, "Tell me what you did."

"Nothing," he insisted. "It was nothing."

"If it was really nothing, then you wouldn't be in the infirmary." You pulled him in close, hoping against hope that doing so might grant him a bit if extra strength... enough, at least, to tell you about what he'd done to himself. You were glad he hadn't used his lightsaber; simultaneously, you couldn't help but wonder why he'd picked a different method this time around.

He waited for what felt like a very long time, then finally, "It was bug poison."

"Bug poison?"

"Insecticide— they use it in bars and restaurants all over the city. Master Obi-Wan had already taken my lightsaber, so I decided to—"

 _"Ani,"_ you said, trying very hard not to sound as though you were scolding him. "You promised me you wouldn't—"

"I wasn't thinking about that."

"Were you thinking about this?" You reached into a pocket beneath your outer tunic; pulled out Anakin's flame-gem. The one he'd been given by his mother; the one he'd given you, ostensibly as a promise to you that he would keep himself safe.

Maybe showing it to him had been a mistake, because it was then that he finally started to sob. You didn't know what else to do, so you pulled your legs up onto the bed to get as near to him as you possibly could, and (without letting go of his gem) put your other arm around him while he shuddered and cried. He didn't hold you back, but he did press his face into your shoulder; let your tunic soak up his tears. He was warm, just as he always was. You made sure to appreciate the sensation of his skin beneath your fingertips, simply because of how many times you'd come uncomfortably close to never feeling it again.

"I'm sorry, Anakin— I'm sorry, I—"

 _"I can't do this anymore,"_ he shouted into your robes. "I can't do it! I'm sick of everything I do being wrong; I'm sick of not being allowed to feel things. I'm sick of missing my mom, I'm sick of missing you... I'm just sick. Sick of _everything."_

You buried your nose in the short crop of blonde atop his head; squeezed him tightly. He'd grown so much since you'd first met him— he wasn't a little boy anymore. He was almost a man, in fact, even if that wasn't something he could see for himself. "You just need to hold on a little bit longer, Ani. I know it seems like forever, but it's not. They want too much from you; more than you can give, and you're right— it's not fair. But that doesn't mean you don't need to hold on. Not just for me, but for you too... not to mention your mother. You know that wherever she is, she still loves you, don't you?" 

You felt him nod in concession, but he didn't say anything. That was okay; Anakin didn't have to say anything: You hadn't lied when you'd told him you weren't going to leave until someone dragged you out. _"I love you,"_ you reminded him. "I love you more than I love anyone else in this whole place; more than I can tell you with words. I love you when you succeed, I love you when you fail, and I love you when you don't do anything at all— but I want to love _you._ Not a memory, and not a ghost. You." You took a chance; kissed his head. "Do you understand, Ani?" 

Again, he nodded... but besides that (and his sniffling), he was quiet. That was alright; he didn't need to say he understood for you to know that he did. He also didn't need to say he loved you back, because that was clear too; as obvious as anything. 

You didn't talk anymore that night and neither did he. You did stay with him, though— just as you'd promised. You sat there holding him until he stopped crying; after that, you held him some more. Eventually, he fell back to sleep in your arms; at that point, you lowered him as gently as you could back down onto the bed. You could see his eyes moving about beneath his lids, which told you he was dreaming. You hoped his dreams were good ones this time; hoped he wasn't having nightmares, as he so often did. 

Eventually, someone would pull open that curtain around his bed; eventually, you would be sternly ordered out of the room by an elder Jedi— one who was sure to tell each of your Masters all about what they'd seen (even if all they'd actually witnessed was the sight of you sitting by his side). 

Reluctantly, you would leave; however, not without a fresh sense of resolve.

Whatever it took, you decided that night, you were going to help Anakin— not just help him put up with what was expected of him, but help him get away from it once and for all. You knew it would be harder for him to leave than it would be for you; however, you were determined to do it anyway. Anakin needed a way out of his tiny box; his unyielding little cage. He'd been a slave before his arrival at the Temple, and he'd been a slave ever since... whether the Jedi would ever have admitted it or not.

Anakin was your friend; the best one you'd ever had. He'd done a lot for you over the years you'd spent here together, and he'd done it all in spite of his pain— a pain which ran so deep that he was willing to dump insecticide down his throat to try and make it stop.

Maybe the Council didn't care; maybe they just didn't know what to do. At this point, it really didn't matter.

You'd already decided that there was no way you were going to stand by and let something like this happen ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long for me to post. Thank you for putting up with this weird little story. This chapter was a lot of fun to write, because by the time Ani gets older, he's really not one for extended monologues. His being so young here is a wonderful excuse to let him talk (and talk and talk and talk), and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a very exciting change of pace for me.
> 
> Fair warning, I may or may not upload two different endings to this fic. 🙃


	5. Promises

The weeks and months following Anakin's attempt on his life with the pilfered bug poison were lonesome, to say the least. Your less-than-clandestine trip to visit him in the infirmary had not come without consequences, and the two of you now saw less of one another than you ever had before. You were each kept extraordinarily busy, and the intensity and frequency of your respective training and monitoring seemed to increase dramatically. There was scarcely anywhere you could go or anything you could do without your Masters knowing about it, and you almost never found yourselves on Coruscant together at the same time.

You knew it was intentional, if only because it was too perfect not to be: You'd been the one to be sent away again first; that had been mere days after finding Ani alone in the medical facility. You hadn't been allowed to say goodbye, and you'd been admonished extensively by your Master during your journey to next star system when he'd noticed you sniffling about it into the sleeve of your tunic.

It was weeks after _that_ before you came back to the Temple at all, and by the time you had, Anakin was already gone with his own Master— hurried off on one mission or another, because it was supposedly too grievous a sin for you to be close to him for any significant length of time. Had he fully recovered from his attempt before being ushered away? Did he feel better? For that matter, did anyone except for you even _care_ whether or not he felt better?

If he was so special (and you certainly did believe that Anakin was special), then wouldn't he be special with or without the Jedi? If he truly was destined to do something great, then why did he need to be under _their_ influence to do it? Fate was fate, after all, and the Force existed independently of those who wielded it. If Ani had been 'chosen' for something, then that was enough, wasn't it? It shouldn't matter who, if anyone, laid claim to him.

Anyway, the only person you thought should ever 'lay claim' to Anakin was Anakin himself.

You wished more than anything that you could talk about it with him; _all_ of it, but you couldn't, because he was never there. He wasn't allowed to be. All you could do was hang onto his flame-gem and think about how much you missed him, all the while hoping that he was okay. The last thing you wanted was for him to think you were angry with him, or that you'd forgotten him, or (worst of all) that you didn't care. The fact was that you cared more than ever about Ani, and you'd have given anything to be able to let him know you were still there for him, whether you were 'supposed' to be or not. 

A very small part of you worried that he may simply forget about you; that he might decide, at some point during your time apart, that your friendship wasn't worth all the trouble it had caused him. Even he himself had said that was what he thought the Council wanted. 

The fact was that as much as he'd always seemed to need you, you had always needed Anakin right back: You didn't want to lose him at all; not to himself, and not to the Order either, especially not if his enmeshment with them was causing him such pain. You didn't know how or why anyone would ever have thought it wise to try and assimilate a boy like him, but you supposed that dogma tended to bring out people's foolishness in a way few other things could. 

The Jedi and their Code, along with their prophecies and superstitions and archaic regulations, had been making you feel increasingly stifled for a very long time now. Being disallowed from seeing a person you loved and cared for (and who was frequently hurting) only highlighted those feelings. If anything, the elders' influence was having the effect of pushing you _away_ from the Force, rather than helping you to harness it more effectively. It propelled you further and further inside yourself; made you feel disconnected from the Temple, from your Master, from your fellow Padawans, and from the rest of the galaxy, too. 

Anything that put up a barrier between you and the Force, you'd begun to surmise, couldn't possibly be good for you. Well-intentioned or not, you were beginning to feel that your lifelong ties to the Order were growing toxic; more like sticky tentacles than noble binds. You wondered if Anakin, by now, felt the same way.

You'd never know if you couldn't even talk to him... and maybe that was part of the point.

Talking to Ani was one of the things you happened to be thinking about one morning while you were attempting to meditate in your room. It was a day like nearly any other you'd ever spent at the Temple— you had just returned from yet another mission, and had been granted a period of rest following your arrival on Coruscant. You'd seen no sign of Anakin upon landing, nor upon re-entering the Temple itself. You hadn't felt him either, but that didn't surprise you. Once again, your previously-robust connection to the Force had grown somewhat tenuous lately... and anyway, chances were that he was already gone; that your arrivals and departures had once again been perfectly orchestrated so as not to overlap.

Just as you started to lose yourself in thoughts of how very much you missed sitting on your bed and talking to him, though, something external stole away your attention. 

_The gardens!_ called a comfortingly familiar, _very_ eager voice. It seemed to come from far away, although it thrilled you to hear nonetheless. You couldn't have stopped yourself from grinning if you'd tried.

"The gardens?" you asked aloud. What did he mean, exactly? Was he here; actually, _physically_ here? What _about_ the gardens?

 _I mean the gardens!_ Anakin reiterated. _Come and meet me— **I miss you.**_

"The _Temple_ gardens?" you asked again, incredulous. "Ani, someone will see us."

He didn't answer that... or maybe he did, and you just couldn't pick up on it. You had no way of knowing, not that it mattered very much to you either way: If Anakin was in the gardens and he wanted you to meet him there, then that's where you were going to go. To hell with anyone who saw you— the longer you and Ani were kept away from one another, the less you were going to care about the consequences of breaking the rules. It was why you'd chanced visiting him when he'd been sick... and it was why you were about to leave your space to go and see him now, too. 

It had been so long; how could you have refused the opportunity to be with him after so much time had passed? 

You hopped off of your bed then; ventured out into the corridor. You looked around yourself, and— once satisfied that you weren't being actively observed— stalked off in the direction of what was supposed to be the most peaceful place on Coruscant.

...

The first thing you did when you spotted Anakin was call his name. He was sitting on a patch of grass so verdant it almost seemed to shimmer, facing a small stream whose presence on a planet such as this one was so unlikely as to make it seem even more beautiful than it already was. His back was turned to you, but it didn't stay that way for long; as soon as he sensed your approach, he twisted about to offer you a smile. It felt _wonderful_ to see him smile.

"Ani," you said again, as you dashed over to sit down next to him, tunic fluttering behind you. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for—" 

Before you could finish apologizing for how long it had been since you'd last seen him, though, he had already interrupted you with (of all things) a kiss. It was fairly brief; chaste, even... but he wrapped his arms around you for it anyway; squeezed you tightly while he closed his eyes and almost seemed to sigh with relief. You had kissed Anakin before, of course, but not quite like this— never out in the open; never without warning. 

Never, _ever_ when you weren't already lost in the act of sharing a type of intimacy that two Jedi Padawans never ought to have shared.

"I'm sorry," he said, once he'd pulled his head back and loosened his grip on you. "I know I shouldn't have done that, but I—"

"It's okay, Anakin," you interrupted, because you didn't want him to feel as if he needed to apologize. "I understand. Do you have any idea how much I've missed you?"

He laughed first, and then he nodded. "I think I do," he said. He looked down at the grass briefly and admitted, "...I thought you were mad at me, at first."

 _"No,"_ you told him emphatically. That was just what you'd been afraid of. "No, I could never be mad at you— not _that_ mad, anyway. I've been trying to figure out a way to talk to you alone for months now, but—"

"But every time you think you have a shot at it, I'm already gone... right?"

Now it was your turn to nod. "Right," you confirmed. "So I guess you've..."

"...Been going through just the same thing," he finished for you, as his smile faded and he let his hands fall from you entirely. His expression turned to one of disdain as he shifted his gaze in the direction of the stream and said next, "I hate what they've been doing to us— it's not fair."

"I know it's not," you said. "Especially not after what happened. I've been hoping and praying for months that you were okay; no one told me a thing. All they told me was that I needed to stay away from you, but I never actually wanted to. Not even for a minute."

"You were the only person who came to see me while I was sick," he told you. "Even Master Obi-Wan only showed up to tell me how stupid I was."

"I'm sure he didn't say it like—"

"He didn't, but he might as well have."

You sighed. "Did anyone at least talk to you about—"

"Of course not." He looked back to you then. "Do you really think anybody here cares about the way I feel? Anyone other than you?"

"They care, Ani, they just don't know how to help. What did I tell you? About this place being too small for you?" You were rather close to him on the grass, so you reached out to grab his hand, which he'd been resting on his lap. You squeezed, and he squeezed back. Neither of you ventured to let go.

"It's nice of you to say that, but we both know the problem is with me. If I wasn't so—"

 _"Shh,"_ you hushed him, making sure you were looking him right in the eye as you did. "It isn't you, and it never has been." You paused; thought about how acutely he must feel his lack of ability to conform to the Order's teachings. Finally, "...I've been thinking about that a lot lately, you know."

"About what?" His eyes were wide; it was only then that you noticed the pronounced bags hanging beneath them. 

"About _this,"_ you said, gesturing all around yourself with your free hand. "All of it. The Temple, the Council, the Order, the missions..." you trailed off, and looked down at the grass much like he had only moments ago. "I don't feel strong with the Force anymore. Being a Jedi is supposed to mean being a part of something bigger, but that's not the way I feel. Not lately— not without you."

He was quiet after that, and for a moment you wondered if you maybe shouldn't have been so honest with him. When you looked back up from the ground, though, you were caught off-guard by his face: For all intents and purposes, Ani looked like he was about to cry.

"I'm sorry," you said, a lot like he'd apologized for kissing you. "I shouldn't tell you—"

 _"It's been the same for me,"_ he blurted out, likely a bit more loudly than he'd intended. "It's been just the same. How can I do what I'm supposed to do if I miss you all the time; if being away from you without knowing when I'm going to see you again hurts this much? You're the only one who's ever there for me, and when they take you away, I feel like I might as well be just like anybody else. Master Obi-Wan talks about prophecies; tells me that I'm 'special' and that I need to be here. I'm going to be a terrible Jedi and I know it, but I can't _afford_ to be a terrible Jedi." His voice cracked before he went on, "Obi-Wan says I'm the 'Chosen One', but what does that even mean? He never tells me what I need to do, only that I need to do it." He squeezed your hand again then, and blinked his tears away as best he could. Anakin cried as often as you'd have expected someone in his position to cry, but you also knew that he hated doing it. 

You hated it too, but only because it felt like there was nothing you could do right now to fix the things that made him feel so hopeless.

"You know what I think?" you asked. When he cocked his head curiously, you continued, "I think you're not supposed to understand what the hell they're talking about when they talk about that prophecy. I think they want you to think you need them to do what you're supposed to do; that they want you to be afraid to leave."

"Huh?"

"Think about it— if what they say about you is true, then why does it matter whether you're here or not?"

"Because I need to learn how to harness my power to—"

"It's bullshit," you said decidedly, whether you ought to have or not. "It's complete bullshit— I think you're as special as they think you are, but I also think that if the Force is going to do something unique with you, then it'll do it whether you stay in the Order or not. They say the Force is all there is, don't they? Well, if that's true, then what the hell do we need them for?"

He swallowed hard. "I don't think you should— I mean, we're not supposed to—"

"Doubt them?" you asked, and when he nodded yet again, you said, "They're not really giving me much of a choice."

He breathed in deeply, and glanced down at your hands. Your fingers were entwined with his; your knuckles were white thanks to how tightly you were hanging onto one another. "The nightmares came back," he confessed to you suddenly with a newly-pleading gaze. How long had he been waiting to say something to someone about his dreams?

"I can tell you haven't been sleeping," you said, scanning the heavy, grey circles hanging underneath his eyes. "What are they about this time?"

"They're about my mom," he whispered, as if he was afraid for someone to hear him say it. "They're not just dreams, though; I know they're not. She's in danger, or she will be soon, and I need to get to her before—"

"Wait— how do you know for sure that they're visions and not just dreams?" you asked, leaning in so that you could hear him better. 

"Do you remember what I told you about hardly being able to remember her? He face; her voice?" 

"I do remember," you said. How could you forget something like that? Your heart had broken for him in the moment he'd described not being able to conjure a stable image of the person he loved most.

"Everything about her is... I don't know how to describe it, really. It's _clear._ She looks and sounds just the way she's supposed to; she's not foggy or blurry the way she is when I think about her while I'm awake." 

Your heart felt like it was being squeezed. It certainly did sound as if Anakin was describing a premonition. "Have you talked to Master Obi-Wan about it?" you asked, already knowing what Ani was going to say about that.

"I have," he answered. "He says my place isn't on Tatooine anymore; that I need to stay focused on the present— that I need to let go." You were still holding his hand, and at that you felt it start to tremble. He couldn't hold back his tears anymore; not all of them, anyway. A couple of them forced their way out of the corners of his eyes, and started to fall down his face.

_Enough,_ you thought. _This is enough._

"...Come with me, Ani," you whispered. "Come back to my room with me."

"What? I picked this spot to meet you because I knew it would be easier not to get found out. If they catch us in your room together, they'll—"

"Let them," you said, before he could finish that thought. "Follow me; you'll understand when we get there."

"But—"

"Do you trust me, Anakin?"

"Of course I do."

_"Then let's go."_

...

The journey back to your quarters was brief, but tense. You skulked as swiftly as you could down the corridors of the Temple with Ani until you arrived; when you did, you pushed him inside ahead of you. After that, you went right in behind him, and closed the door as carefully as you could.

"What is this about?" he asked, as you reached beneath your bed to retrieve what you needed. "I'm supposed to—"

"Do you want to see your mother, Ani?" 

He hesitated. "...More than anything in the world," he finally told you, seeming more than a bit confused.

"Do you remember what we talked about before? About 'someday'?"

"I do, but..."

"Well," you said, "it's here. This is 'someday'."

You set the bag you'd pulled out from beneath your bed heavily atop the mattress, then. It was filled with a number of things you'd acquired and been very careful to hide over the course of the time you'd been without Anakin. The decision you'd made to help him get away from everything that was hurting him hadn't been made lightly; you'd meant it with your whole heart. You hadn't anticipated putting your plan into action quite so soon, but if Ani's mom was in trouble, then you didn't have a choice. 

How could they keep him here, you wondered, if he was having those kinds of visions about her? Was he supposed to just 'let go' of her the same way he was supposed to let go of you, and the rest of his feelings? You'd reflected before that cruelty had no place in the Jedi Order. Given what Anakin's mother meant to him, keeping him from helping her was the very definition of cruelty. Did they not believe him, or did they truly just not care?

Either way, it was unforgivable. 

"What is all of that?" he asked, as you opened the biggest compartment of the bag and began to check that everything was there. He sounded nervous; as if he knew just what you were doing, but wasn't ready to believe it. You could also hear in his voice the remnants of the tears he'd choked back in the gardens; that only strengthened your resolve.

"There are clothes," you said, lifting up the layers of fabric to check that everything you'd put beneath them was still in place. "I have a set for both of us; I'll give you yours right now. If we wear these, we won't look like Jedi."

"...Wear them _where?"_ he asked slowly, as if he'd already figured it out but couldn't quite make himself believe it yet. 

You looked over at him and smiled. Truthfully, you were frightened too... but Anakin deserved your confidence. If this worked, you had all the time in the world to be scared later on. 

"To the Outer Rim," you said, placing a nondescript shirt and an admittedly pre-owned set of pants (they were all you could afford; anyway, you didn't want to look too fancy while you travelled) onto the bed, close to where he was standing next to it. "I have credits in here, too," you added. "As many as I could scrounge up on my last few missions, anyway. I have rations and soap, and tickets for a shuttle that will get us as far as the Mid Rim." You paused before admitting, "...I'm not sure how to get to Tatooine from there, exactly, but we'll figure it out." Other people did it; they did it all the time. There was no reason you and Ani couldn't do it, too.

Excitement at the notion of your plan coming to fruition was starting to overtake you; you hadn't thought you'd actually be ready to do this for a while. Again, though, if Anakin's mom needed help, then that was that. You loved him; you weren't about to let him suffer, or make someone who was as important to him as she was wait to be saved. For all you knew, she _couldn't_ wait. Maybe the elder Jedi were willing to take the risk, but you simply weren't. 

After you'd gone through the bag making sure everything was ready, you turned to Anakin again. He hadn't said anything since you'd placed his new clothes in front of him, so you asked, "What do you think? I'll leave first; you wait here for an hour, and then follow me to the shuttle station south of the Temple. If anyone asks where you're going, just say—"

"I can't do this," he interrupted you. His face was stark-white; his eyes were still wide. He looked terrified. "I'm supposed to go with my Master to the senate tomorrow, I—"

"What do you mean you can't do it?" you asked. "We've been talking about this for years; now that we're finally ready, you're really saying you're not going to come with me?" You spoke gently, because you knew he was frightened. You were, too, but you also knew that this had to happen. All you'd ever known was the Jedi and the Temple— you'd been here ever since you could remember... but that didn't mean it was where you wanted to be; where you _needed_ to be. 

"Master Obi-Wan..." he started, but you didn't let him.

"Master Obi-Wan loves you, Ani, and I know he cares... but I also see the way he looks at you sometimes. He knows you're too big for this place just as well as I do; he's helpless, because he knows the Temple can't hold you. Not all of you, anyway."

"But the prophecy—"

"If the prophecy is true, you'll fulfill it whether you're here or not. You believe in the Force, don't you?" It was a stupid question, really, but you wanted to hear him answer it out loud anyway.

"As much as I've ever believed in anything, but..."

 _"Then trust it._ The Force called you here in the first place, and you came. After that, it brought us together; _kept_ us together, even when that wasn't what the Council wanted. Now it's calling you back to your mom; calling you because she needs you." You stopped; looked at him. Carefully, "How many times have you felt like you wanted to die because you were stuck here, Anakin?" 

His lip trembled; not only that, his hands were shaking, too. "...More times than even you know about," he conceded, staring down at the set of clothes you'd put out for him to wear to the shuttle station. 

"What if I'm not there the next time you feel like lancing yourself with a lightsaber, or the next time you want to swallow poison? What's going to happen to your mom then?"

He shook his head. "You realize they'll come after us, don't you?" 

"We'll be in the Mid Rim by the time they realize we're not coming back."

"What about after that?" he asked. "Do you think they won't follow us to Tatooine, too? They know that's the first place I'd go if—"

 _"Let them,"_ you said, just as when he'd told you he was worried about coming with you to your room. "What are they going to do when they find you— stick a bag over your head and force you back to Coruscant?" Not even the most orthodox members of the Order would pull a stunt like that. The truth was that once you were gone, there wasn't much that could be done about it. You supposed they could try to manipulate Anakin; guilt him into coming back... but that was why you were going to be there for him. You weren't about to let him be used; he'd had more than enough of that.

All at once, it became painfully clear to you why the Council had been so ardent in their attempts to keep you apart. If Anakin had someone to stand up for him, he wouldn't be a very good tool, would he?

That only served to renew your anger. Ani was no one's puppet. 

He still looked scared— terrified, really— but he took a deep breath, looked back up at you, and said, "You're right," in spite of his fear.

You'd never been more proud of him.

"Take the clothes I gave you, and go to your room. Wait an hour, put them on underneath your tunic, and leave. I'll be at the shuttle station by then; we'll get rid of our old clothes, and then we'll board." Breaking out and boarding the shuttle would be the hardest part; once you'd done that, you knew everything else would fall into place. You could feel it in the very depths of whatever it was inside of you that made you who you were; you sensed that Anakin could feel it, too.

This was it— it was finally happening.

"What should I do with this?" he asked, motioning to his lightsaber. You supposed his Master had gone back to trusting him with it again; it was clipped to his belt, just like it always was.

You shrugged. "I'm keeping mine," you said. "I made it; it belongs to me. Anyway, it'll be easier for us to help your mother if we have our weapons, won't it?"

He finally smiled at you again; it felt as good as when he'd turned to look at you in the gardens. "...Yeah," he agreed. "It will." He looked down at his hands, and then at you again. "Do you really mean this?" he asked. "Because if you don't—"

 _"I mean it, Ani._ As much as I've ever meant anything."

"I can't do this without you, you know."

"You won't have to. We'll have each other, the same way we always have."

"Do you promise? You won't get mad at me, or take off because you hate where I'm from?" You could tell by the look in his eyes that if you didn't promise, he wasn't going to go. That was fine with you; it was an easy promise to make. You knew it would be easy to keep, too; you'd stayed by Anakin's side through far worse things than heat and sand. 

You stepped up closely to him, looked him in the eye, and placed your hands on his shoulders. _"I promise,"_ you said, squeezing him tightly with your fingers. "I've never been more serious about anything than I am about this."

He looked like he was about to cry again, but he was still smiling. "...Okay," he said, after one last pause. "You said an hour, right?"

"Right," you grinned, as you let go of him. "I'll be waiting for you at the station."

"Then that's where I'll see you," he said, and at that he kissed you again. Unlike the kiss from the gardens, it was neither brief nor chaste. You wrapped your arms around his waist and closed your eyes; relished his warmth until he pulled away. When he did, he grabbed the clothes you'd bought for him with those trembling hands of his, and then he left the room.

You listened to his boots click down the corridor until they faded away; after that you went to work checking your bag— the very last thing you slipped inside of it was Anakin's flame-gem; you tucked it into the very safest pocket, along with your credits. 

Anakin's mother would be happy to see it again, you thought... but much more than that, she'd be happy to see her son.

A few short minutes later, you exited your room and shut the door behind you. You walked down the corridor, and out another door; not the front door, but a door nonetheless. You looked up at the speeders zooming by in the air, and around at all of the buildings and structures and well-constructed footpaths comprising the city. You looked down at the boots on your feet, and at the bag at your side; once you'd done that, you looked ahead of yourself— southward, the direction of the shuttle station.

The only thing you didn't look back at was the Temple, because you knew you had no reason to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original ending is finished too (it has been for a while), but I'm not going to put it up today. Like everyone else, I've been through a lot of shit lately; after looking into young Ani's beautiful, tortured little soul like this, I'm just not willing to flush his relationship with Reader down the toilet... at least not officially.
> 
> I may or may not post the alternate ending as a one-shot soon, I haven't quite decided. There's also a bit of an epilogue to follow this chapter; it's also finished, so it'll likely be up tomorrow.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you didn't mind reading what you just read. For as inconsequential as these stories are in general, I really don't like disappointing the people who are kind enough to bother with them.
> 
> See you soon, if you feel like sticking around. :)


	6. Joy (Epilogue)

_"What's the first thing you're going to do once we get to Tatooine, Anakin? After we find your mom and make sure she's okay, I mean."_

_"I'm going to free her— I'll podrace until I win enough money, if I have to."_

_"What about after that?"_

_"I don't know. We might be stuck there for a while. Did you really mean it when you said you'd stay?"_

_"Of course I did. I already told you— **I'm not going anywhere."**_

...

For all of Anakin's anxiety about it, keeping your promise to him proved to be extraordinarily easy. From the moment he approached you at the station on Coruscant to the moment you finally arrived at the spaceport on the outskirts of Mos Espa, you didn't doubt your decision to leave the Temple with him— not for even a second. You spent the journey itself leaning against one another in your seats, talking and resting in turns. When one of you sensed any kind of trepidation from the other, you'd take each other by the hand and smile encouragingly. No one admonished you for it; not a single person even looked at you strangely. For the first time in your life, you felt more like a person than a Padawan.

"I love you," you reminded him, when you finally disembarked on Tatooine.

"I love you, too," he said back, before leaning in to offer you a very innocent, yet exhilaratingly public kiss. You'd never kissed him where anybody else could see you do it before. The notion of not having to _care_ who saw you do it made you happy in a way you couldn't describe, because you'd never been taught the correct words with which to do so. That was alright, though, because you didn't need words to feel joy— all you needed was him.

Following your arrival, you'd gone to see his old master... only to find that his mother had already been sold. The news distressed him at first, until he was informed of the fact that she hadn't been sold to another slave owner, but to a man who'd fallen in love with her. His premonitions still weighing heavily on his mind, you ventured out into the desert with him after that in an effort to find her anyway. Thankfully, it didn’t take you very long to do— Anakin could feel her; he’d felt her as soon as the two of you had ventured out into the sand.

"Ani!" she’d exclaimed, on her way out of her new homestead. You'd arrived just as she had been leaving. "What are you doing here? Tell me what's happened— _tell me what's going on."_

He had poured his heart out to her then, in a way you'd only ever witnessed him do with you. It made you feel happy to see him speak so honestly; so _freely._ Anakin had never deserved anything less.

You both stayed after that; stayed long enough to ascertain Shmi Skywalker's safety. Her new husband was a good man, as it turned out; so was his son, and the young woman who would eventually marry him. Their homestead was a simple place; hot and sandy, and with lots of work to be done.

That, along with Anakin's desire to remain close to his mother, might have been why you soon found yourselves opting not to leave at all.

The Lars family was kind; kind enough that they shared their home with you, in spite of Anakin's having warned them that the Jedi may very well be on their way to try and retrieve him. Cliegg in particular was gravely offended by the notion that anyone but Anakin would try to claim ownership of him; the patriarch's distaste for anything even so much as resembling slavery was palpable. It was something over which he and Anakin connected, and that connection seemed to serve them both well.

You might have expected to feel out-of-place on Tatooine; after all, you'd been under the care of the Jedi Order for nearly your entire life. You didn't, though; somehow, it didn't take you long at all to begin feeling very much at home. Ani might have disdained the sand, but you certainly didn't, and— to everyone's surprise— you absolutely relished the heat. The sensation of the sun beating down on you was not unlike the warmth and comfort you'd always drawn from Anakin when he'd held you in your room on Coruscant. On top of that, the farm work to which you found yourself subjected was infinitely more satisfying (and significantly less stressful) than the endless training you'd undergone as a Padawan.

You did still train, of course— neither you nor Ani had any desire to allow your lightsaber abilities or your aptitude for harnessing the Force to grow rusty, and so you didn't. You became one another's sole instructor and sparring partner; used the knowledge you'd gained while you'd been in the Order to both better yourselves and strengthen your bond.

It wasn't long before that bond solidified to the point of being virtually unbreakable.

Everybody noticed it; they must have, because it was painfully obvious... but nobody ever said anything; nobody criticized you, or punished you for the way you felt. You received knowing glances from Shmi and Beru; once in a while, Owen or Cliegg would shake their heads at the spectacle of you and Ani getting lost in one another's gaze. They weren't bothered by the way you felt about each other, though, because they had no reason to be.

Tatooine might not have been perfect— far from it, really— but here, at least, you were allowed to feel. 

You still called Anakin your friend, because that was what you'd always called him. Again, you'd never been taught a different word for what you shared; however, that didn't seem to matter, because whatever it was the two of you had together, it utterly transcended words. You worked together, trained together, and shared a room together; all without the need to sneak or hide or be in any way duplicitous. You kissed in the kitchen over meals of mushroom terrine, haroun bread, and strangely-hued milk, and you held each other beneath the twin suns as they descended into the horizon at night.

You watched Anakin smile as he greeted you at the end of long days comprised of desert travel and farm chores; listened to him laugh as he worked happily in the garage with Owen on all manner of droids, vehicles, and other equipment. Anakin loved to work with his hands, and the Lars farm was a place where those hands of his always had something important to do. He fixed things not only for his family, but for his neighbours as well— even people from Mos Espa would come to him with tools and other objects that needed maintenance or repair. He earned money that way; not a lot, necessarily, but enough that life for all of you was comfortable.

It had been a long time since either you or Anakin had felt comfortable.

He still cried sometimes, and so did you— when you did, though, it was typically because of the past as opposed to the present. Ani's nightmares, when he had them, really _were_ just nightmares, at least for now... and although you were both well aware of the fact that the Order was likely still in search of you, you didn't live in fear. It was alright to be scared here, of course, but you weren't; didn't feel like you had to be. If and when anyone ever came for you, you would be more than ready for them, because you had each other. 

Your bond, happily, was one thing about your lives that didn't seem to change, except to grow stronger.

Once in a while, you would worry; worry that Anakin might become bored or restless with the redundancy of the landscape and the lifestyle. Whenever you voiced that concern to him, though, it was always handily dismissed: _This is where I need to be right now,_ he'd say. _I can feel it— and if the Force ever does call me away from Tatooine again, do you really think I'm going to leave without you?_

He'd pull you tightly towards his chest then, and usually kiss your head too, because you were nearly always already holding one another when that particular subject came up. 

You figured he must have been telling you the truth, because even when you _weren't_ resting in one another's arms, he was more content than you'd ever seen him. He liked the work he did, and the company he kept; when he went into town, he walked and talked like someone who was sure of himself. Anakin, by his very nature, had _always_ been sure of himself, of course... but you knew that his faith in who he was had been badly shaken by the time you'd finally pulled him away from the Order.

The confidence he displayed now wasn't a farce or a facade; rather, it was genuine. 

He'd cut off his braid soon after arriving (you'd cut yours off, too), but he hadn't touched his hair since. He let it grow long, and thanks to the sunlight it was _blonde_ ; at the height of midday, it sometimes even seemed to gleam an effervescent white. His skin had colour to it now; more than what the dimness of the Temple’s corridors had ever allowed it to take on, anyway. Instead of black, he wore white; it reflected the heat of the suns, and besides that, it suited him.

It suited him as much as the vastness of the sky above the equally expansive desert suited him— finally, you were somewhere that was big enough for him; big enough for his spirit. The oppressive clutter of Coruscant had never been good for him, you realized; it had been just as restrictive as the tenets of the Order themselves. 

He still didn't _love_ the sand, but even he had to admit that it was easier to fall upon during training than the Temple's unforgiving marble.

These thoughts and more were the ones floating freely about your mind one day months after your arrival, as you watched him approach the house. It was just about twilight; the sky was dark, but the horizon was still bright. You could see some stars, although not all of them— not yet. Anakin was riding one of his stepfather's speeders back from town; he went there often to buy and sell parts, and to collect winnings from the podraces in which he sometimes took part. You didn't begrudge him his competitive spirit, because you trusted him to be safe... and anyway, he was a pilot at heart, even if he did happen to have ceased venturing into the depths of space for the time being.

After kicking up a great cloud of dust in the distance, he jumped off of the speeder and looked for you, silhouetted handsomely by the fading light. When he spotted you, he smiled in a way only he could, and jogged up to you because he couldn't wait for you to place your arms around him.

"I love you," he said, fearlessly and with utmost sincerity. _"I missed you today."_

"I missed you too," you replied, and your words weren't heavy or tinged by sadness, because once you said them you got to keep on walking together— beneath the stars, across the sand... right on down into the house. There you were granted the pleasure of eating and laughing and talking with Anakin's family, until eventually he pulled you aside and whispered into your ear that he wanted to go to bed. 

After that was when you retreated to your shared room together. You did so openly, without having to worry about who may or may not end up seeing you slip away hand-in-hand.

You smiled to yourself as you took your place next to him that night, because for the first time in his entire life, Anakin Skywalker was beholden to no one. He wasn't a pawn or a puppet, or a means to an end. Ani was simply _himself,_ and you were as sure as you'd ever been of anything that who he was would be more than enough to fulfill any special destiny the Force might happen to have in store for him. He could never have been who he was supposed to be from inside a Jedi Knight's narrow little box; you'd always known that, and it thrilled you now that he no longer needed to try.

You were grateful to the will of the Force for giving you the bond you shared with him; for giving you love, and a life— a _real_ life. Unlike the Jedi, you knew that the best way to honour such a gift was to cherish it; hold onto it. _Find joy in it._

It had always been easy to find joy in being with Anakin, no matter what the circumstance. Now, having asserted the power of what you felt for him by escaping the clutches of the Order, you knew that it was only going to get easier. The more time that passed, the harder it became to believe he’d once wanted to end his life.

Ani was never meant to be a Jedi... and it was through the happiness you came to share with him on his homeworld that you realized with absolute certainty that you were never meant to be one, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, now that it's finished, I just love the hell out of this story. I hope you do, too. Maybe I'll write about their lives on Tatooine one day, or the talk they have with Obi if/when he comes to try and get his Chosen One back. I bet Qui-Gon would back up Reader's interpretation of the prophecy. What if they have kids, or end up having to kick Palpatine's ass, or just deal with some good old fashioned PTSD? 
> 
> ...I'll shut up now, I'm sorry, I just didn't expect to like it inside of this story so much. :P
> 
> Anyway, that's it for now. Thank you for reading this.
> 
> The alternate/original ending can be found [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28737378) I'm glad I didn't use it, though.


End file.
